Go to a restaurant where a meal will set you back at least $40, not including tip, and the person who takes your order will probably be a white man. The worker who clears away your dirty dishes? Probably Latino or African-American.

Why does it matter that servers at higher-end restaurants in California and across the country are overwhelmingly white men, while the ranks of bussers are heavily minority?

Because a server at high-end restaurants in Oakland or San Francisco can earn anywhere from $50,000 to $150,000, according to government wage data. Take-home pay for a busser is $30,000 max. A single person living in the Oakland-Fremont metro area must earn at least $39,603 to make a living wage, according to the Economic Policy Institute’s Family Budget Calculator.

A new national study by Restaurant Opportunities Centers United found that minorities and women are overwhelmingly concentrated in restaurant jobs that pay poverty wages and have almost no opportunity for advancement. African-Americans and Latinos, and particularly women of color, are concentrated in fast-food restaurants at the bottom of the wage totem pole. White men dominate the highest earning occupations in the highest paid areas like fine dining.

“End Jim Crow in America’s Restaurants: Racial and Gender Occupational Segregation in the Food Industry” reported that on average, white men earned higher wages than minorities and women even when they were doing the same job.

The report focused on California, which has the most restaurant workers in the country. The state also has one of the most diverse populations. Cities such as Oakland and San Francisco are regarded as top restaurant destinations.

For all these reasons, ROC, the advocacy group for low-wage workers, thought California would be the ideal laboratory both to further research on race and gender segregation in the restaurant industry as well as test programs and policies to address it.

The researchers examined state and national wage data by race, gender and occupation in consultation with UC Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley’s Food Labor and Research Center. They found that nonwhite restaurant workers received 56 percent lower earnings when compared to equally qualified white workers. Women of color earned 71 percent as much as white men, which was $4 per hour less. Latinos comprise more than half of the state’s restaurant workers. Yet they represent 65 percent of the workers in low-paying kitchen jobs such as dishwasher and cleaner.

The researchers interviewed restaurant workers, employment discrimination experts and restaurant owners primarily in the Bay Area. They sent out equally qualified white and nonwhites to apply for restaurant jobs to test for hiring bias.

“We found that white applicants get told, OK, let’s try you today, ” ROC co-founder Saru Jayaraman said. “The worker of color gets told we are not hiring now and very rarely knows he is being discriminated against.”

Even though it’s clear hiring discrimination is a big problem, it’s far from the only barrier that prevents minorities and women from both getting hired and advancing in the restaurant industry.

Some workers lack the necessary training, which means employers don’t have a pool of applicants to choose from.

There is also what researchers call “self-selection bias” when people steer themselves to lower-level jobs because they don’t see anyone of their race or gender in higher positions.

Restaurant owners also told interviewers that some white patrons were hostile to nonwhite servers — even in Oakland, which prides itself on its diversity and progressive attitudes.

Earlier this week, ROC announced plans for a pilot program to train minorities for jobs in Oakland’s booming restaurant industry and to help them develop their own food service businesses. The CHOW institute is modeled after programs in New York, Detroit and New Orleans. It will be housed at Restore Oakland, a community-based center scheduled to open in East Oakland in the fall. The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights will hold restorative justice sessions at the location, and there will be health and child care programs.

The innovative community-based program is being funded with the help of a $1 million anonymous donation and a $500,000 Google Impact Challenge grant.

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